Clone Wars Oneshots (and some Bad Batch)

#8: The Sergeant and the Unjedi

   "I know my weaknesses," she said slowly, matching his tone.

   Skirata paused and looked up from his packing. "Best knowledge of all," he said.

   "Just tell me what's at stake," Morgana said, tired of beating around the proverbial bush of the topic of her past.

   "Now, there's an interesting request from a Jedi. Sorry, ex-Jedi." He put his hand carefully in the side of the carryall and withdrew a small cloth-wrapped package. When he unwrapped it and held it out in his palm, she could see it held small scan bars mounted on fragments of white plastoid alloy. "For me, stopping more of these. For the Republic, stopping activity that limits the ability of the Grand Army to deploy. For the Senate, showing the Seps that they can't strike here at will. Take your pick."

   She knew what the objects were now: she'd seen them on hundreds of chest plates. They were armor tallies, the identification devices all clone soldiers wore.

   "Well, given the fact that I don't give a bantha's backside about what the Republic or the Senate wants...I'll go with the first option," she said grimly, her gaze growing defocused as she thought of the other Fi, the one who was no longer alive to be boyishly excited like his namesake at the prospect of seeing the Coruscant that lay beyond the barracks. The one who had died in her arms, the one whose pain she had taken but whose life force had slowly faded into nonexistence anyway. She could still feel the remnants of that pain, and knew in her gut that it would never go away. "You really think I'll be useful?"

   "In urban operations, a woman is always useful, Force-sensitive or not," said Skirata, putting extra emphasis on the words "Force-sensitive". "Another aid to invisibility: old di'kute like me and females like you."

   Skirata smiled and rewrapped the armor tallies. Morgana felt oddly gratified and flattered, as if he wasn't just smiling at her, but as if he were smiling because of her; personally, she thought that was ridiculous, but her Force senses told her it wasn't entirely false. She felt her double- bladed lightsaber on her belt, a reminder that she had even fewer possessions than this nomad.

   "So General Jusik's part of this operation?" She asked somewhat warily, the lightsabers reminding her of why she never wanted to come back to Coruscant. "And what about Zey?" She'd worked with him on Qiilura, yes, but that didn't mean she wanted to do it again.

   "General Zey is not officially aware of this," Skirata replied nonchalantly.

   "Well, that answers my second question," she said, but she already knew the answer to the first. "So, if we're not operating out of here, then where are we operating out of?"

   "Oh, somewhere interesting. Give me a couple of days and then we can relocate. Besides, the boys need some rest." He paused. "From what I hear, so do you."

   So he wasn't going to tell her. Fine. "Do I really look that bad?" She asked, giving him a half- smile.

   He chuckled, but there was something in his eyes that remained serious. "I wasn't really talking about your looks," he told her, and his tone made her think she was missing something. And then she remembered. Stopping the missile. Waking up in the medbay.

   One would think that you'd remember something like stopping a missile mid-flight while it was in a different solar system, especially when one was stopping said missile from blowing up people who were very important to her.

   Morgana felt suddenly awkward. "I...thank you for your concern, Sergeant Skirata," she said. "But I'm fine."

   "You sure? Bardan said stopping a missile like that takes a lot out of you." He put a hand on her shoulder, and she fought the urge to recoil, to retreat into her shell and not accept any form of comfort from this man that she had already subconsciously begun to look up to. But she simply remained silent, completely frozen in place. "We need everyone on their top form for this mission, ma'am. And that includes you getting some rest."